Coffee with a dash of character at My Kingdom for a Horse
The aroma of roasting coffee beans may lure you into My Kingdom for a Horse but it's the flavours served by the chefs and baristas that will keep you captivated. Emily Raven, owner of the Wright Street and Waymouth Street cafes, has a knack for creating and celebrating great things — from staff to location.
What makes a good cup of coffee?
"A really great cup of coffee for me comes from two different angles. So I look for consistency - is what I'm drinking meeting my expectations for consistency? The second thing is obviously - is this delicious? Is the temperature right, is the flavour right, is the presentation right, is the service good? So we've got all of those aspects that you have to pull together for a great cup."
Head barista and roaster Gennie Chee pours a latte art rabbit.
What is a must-have for a first time customer?
"I think when you come to My Kingdom for a Horse for the first time, definitely our coffee is the thing [to try]. We're specialty roasters so it's sort of different from your really mainstream commercial-grade coffee. Most of our coffee that we sell here is roasted for espresso - we're seasonal roasters. So we take basically the best of seasonal crops coming into the country from known sources. We're very transparent about what coffee beans we're using.
And what we're trying to do is we're trying to create a very consistent flavour profile in each different coffee that we bring in. So maybe we'll have a new one every three months. We have this very rich nutty caramel flavour… we also have our filtered coffees, which are often [for some customers] a totally new totally thing all together - So, lots of amazing fruit flavors that sort of thing, like citrus stone fruits! Some people look at drinking filtered coffee as being akin to having a glass of wine... so really something different
We also have a full restaurant kitchen seven days a week. We really pride ourselves in the quality of our chefs. Our menu is everything from breakfast, right through to lunch. We cater for the big hangover breakfast right through to gluten-free and vegan... Our shakshuka eggs - the sauce takes three days to cook, it's just absolutely fantastic. A little bit of spice like an Israeli style baked eggs... We produce 50 litres of this sauce a week and, once again, if we tried to take that off the menu I think there'd be a fight. We do a great vegan salad, our slow roast lamb tacos are amazing and if you just want an egg brekkie it's the way to go too."
Why did you start roasting coffee?
"I chose to come into the coffee industry after a long career in hospitality and I originally trained as a chef. I've done lots of different things in my life - retail, I've lectured in hospitality education. I was feeling really inspired I think by a lot of what I was seeing with the students I was teaching in Melbourne. Just people 20 years younger than myself who were really fearless, really had a lot of 'get up and go'... Rather than just opening a cafe or a restaurant, I wanted to bring something different to it and also a little bit of something that would keep me interested as well. So you know, coffee's been something really fun and enjoyable to learn."
Gennie Chee roasting beans in house
Why did you choose to open in the South West corner?
"I'm a big big big fan of the underdog I think I've always liked parts of cities that have that bohemian feel to it. The southwest corner of Adelaide I felt was under-utilised, it lacked a little bit of amenity but it's actually a really great place to live. I live just around the corner from here, it's really interesting. There's everything from community housing to small business, so it's very mixed. You've obviously got all of the charities that exist around Whitmore square and we actively support Westcare there.
Where did the name My Kingdom for a Horse come from?
"My kingdom for a horse is a a quote from Richard III by Shakespeare about the famed doomed tragic King Richard III of England who died on the battlefield on his horse... He says "a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" implying that he's losing the battle because his horse died and he could no longer lead the fight but it's also a modern day metaphor for a missed opportunity. I've been in different aspects of this [industry] for a long time and I'd occasionally get approached to go back in [to hospitality] but the timing was never right for me and so this is my sort of my nod to those missed opportunities and you know here we are, we just turned five years old."